Was the Luftwaffe the most under-performing branch of any military in ww2?

They had some insane kill ratio on Eastern Front against Soviet aircraft.
Kriegsmarine proved its worth with what it could best, the U-boat convoy raiding. They simply lacked big capital ships to counter the Royal Navy successful.

They had a very good one to be sure, but don't forget, a LOT of Soviet plane losses were to airfields being overrun and planes being destroyed on the ground. A hell of a lot during the first six weeks of war.

Look at the German Aces of the war. Absolutely miles ahead of any other aces.

Apparently the German Intelligence Service was so incompetent (or so competently anti nazi) that by the end of the war they were literally taking orders from Allied intelligence, and supplying them with all sorts of information, and Hitler with all sorts of disinformation. This was also another reason Hitler trusted his SS intelligence over the national service, although they had their own serious flaws, at least they were not conspiring with the enemy.

Of course if you consider the Nazis the enemy, the German Intelligence did quite well.

That's a funny way of spelling the entire freaking Italian Armed Forces. I mean even their Navy which was probably the best equipped and trained of the Italian forces was a freaking clown car compared to anyone else in World War II.

Yes, but the Germans also had comparatively worse kill scores for non-ace pilots, due to how they always had the lead pilot take shots

They also kept their pilots in the field a lot longer than other countries; the allies usually rotated their top pilots into training roles.

>believing the claims of German aces
Do I have to break out my pasta about JG 52 and Crimea for the billionth time?

The Luftwaffle, for what it was, did a stellar job. I'd argue that the SS was far worse.

Do it.

I'd wager the IJAF post Battle of Singapore. And only by a slight margin from pre Battle of Singapore. 4

>it's another "lets shit on the Italians thread"

kys

They did perform pretty poorly, you must admit. Although their planes were stellar, at least, if rare to see.

>Look at the German Aces of the war. Absolutely miles ahead of any other aces.
First of all, Germans counted wins differently.
A wing of 4 fighters shot down a plane? 4 wins for Germans, one for British/Americans/whatever.

Secondly it was caused by the way they've did manpower rotation. British or Americans sent people who had ~10-15 wins back to the home to either be a star of various events ending up in buying war bonds or do something 100 times more important than shooting enemy planes - training new pilots. As such, Luftwaffe ran out of their great aces at some point and had nobody competent to replace them with.

British or Americans literally never had this problem.

Sure no one will argue that, there's a whole list of reasons why that happened. But there were also plenty of units which regularly overperformed and gave the Allies a lot of grief

Oh certainly, I have a dislike of people who just dismiss nationalities as bad. I was just thinking of the larger picture, so to say.

Fair. I just think overall Italian contributions to the advancement of warfare equipment and tactics get swept under the rug by "lol shitaly" memers

the power of memes is stronk, just look at what happened to french military reputation after the murkans memed it to hell

Overstretched, not underperformance.

>I mean even their Navy which was probably the best equipped and trained of the Italian forces was a freaking clown car compared to anyone else in World War II.
They kept North Africa and the Balkans supplied for three years while fighting against the RN and USN. They performed far better than the KM.

>freaking
>freaking

It wasn't really a branch of military unless you are specifically talking about then Waffen SS

youtube.com/watch?v=nR0r7yrowhU

In the Luftwaffe you flew until you were dead, crippled or captured.

No they were not under-preforming, they were

A/ Under the command of a buffoon, and their real commanders hindered by being sent to oversee ground operations (Kesselring in Italy) No reasonable commander could ever make an assurance that a Pocket the size of Stalingrad could be kept in supply. It was a boast made by a Morphine addict which was taken at face value by a meth addict.

B/ Expected to knock out an island country with antiquated medium bombers and fighters not able to stay long enough to give them adequate air cover

C/ Placed in a fight against countries that built their planes just out their reach (UK) or completely out of their reach (Canada, USA) and trained their pilots in safety (Commonwealth Air Training Scheme), and in comparison, lacked the sort of fuel shortages

Honestly, the Western Allies were playing WW2 on easy mode.

Oh I apologise, I did mean the Waffen SS.

Here we go then.

The Soviets bottled up the Crimea in the Fall of 1943, and roughly 5 months later they overran it. During that time, they committed - at most - three Air Armies with a total strength of no more than 1,500 aircraft. Most likely, the actual number was far less, as the Air Army managing Perekop was also operating over the Dnieper.

During those 5 months, the Soviets reported the loss of 179 aircraft over the Crimea. Meanwhile, Luftwaffe claims include
>50 kills in a month by Gerhard Barkhorn
>1,000 kills by II./JG 52 in the last month they were deployed to the Crimea
>2,000 kills by II./SG 2's Fw 190s over the course of their deployment
I couldn't find a total claim count for the Germans, but from various different sources reporting claims from parts of the campaign, it looks like the Luftwaffe claimed something approaching 5,000 enemy aircraft over the course of the campaign.

So effectively, Luftwaffe kill reporting practices were so poor that, by the end of the war, the majority of claims were embellished.

And what makes it better is that all three of Germany's top aces flew in the Crimea. Barkhorn was there for most of the campaign as a unit leader, and Rall and Hartmann transferred there towards the end of the campaign. Rall left after about a week, but Hartmann was there all through that final month, where his unit claimed upwards of 1,000 aircraft.

>muh blind dedication

youtube.com/watch?v=OVqL6TcXM6E

Good video, examines Gunther Rall's reasons for why German aces had such high scores.

An important point of the video that may be overlooked is that individual accomplishments in the context of a total war have zero impact on the strategic level. Thus, to have the most effective fighting force, quality and training must be maintained during wartime. Both Germany and Japan failed to replace their losses with similarly trained or experienced pilots.

I guess another point not in the video is that aces of all nations over reported their numbers of kills.

I think it would be the kamikaze

I wouldnt say underperforming but rather the expectations of them where too high. There was a lot of praise given to them following the Spanish civil war which whilst well deserved was not am accurate portrayal of their performance versus a capable enemy.

A lot of the R&D ceased after the civil war as they believed their aircraft where sufficient to combat all opposing forces however this was not true. They had not been tested in combat with modern technology and thus the bulk of their forces where outdated. Effort was made to improve the existing designs but that could only go so far. The most R&D that was done I'm the later years where on harebrained schemes that where never going to work or where too strenuous on the fuel supplies.

The enphesises but on German air power stretched the capabilities of the Luftwaffe throughout the war. Pilots where rarely given adaquate leave and where sometimes awake for days on end especially during the ending years. Airfields where overstocked and made it difficult to get planes in the air quickly and service them adaquately. Considering most combat for the air force was over enemy territory for the majority of the conflict losses of pilots and planes where often permanent whilst allied pilots would crash on home turf and potentially be flying again in the same day.

As the war began dragging on limmited resources specifically fuel and rubber made it difficult to keep planes in the air and the low manpower made the situation worse. Yet they where still relied upon and expected to fight effectively against overwhelming opposition airpower. It was a lost cause.

Politics also had its way with both doctrinal errors and tactical ones. Hitler's involvement made the situation worse by assigning fighters to ground support rendering them nothing more than cannon fodder and they debatably could have achieved total victory over the British air force if not for gorgings scheming and Barbarossa.

>nobody expected much from them
>alot was expected from them